film stills © Shen Xin

ས་གཞི་སྔོན་པོ་འགྱུར། (The Earth Turned Green) 

3 channel video and sound installation, 38:39, 2022

Using stage lighting in a theater, the film depicts a day’s passing in winter, spring, summer and fall. The audio track and corresponding subtitles are reflections on the recorded imagery by Shen Xin together with their Tibetan language teacher, སྐྱིད་དར་འཛོམས། (Skyi Trazomsa), who verbalize the movement of light and color through conversations in the process of teaching and learning Tibetan. The installation was formed collaboratively through a series of scripts. To begin, Shen wrote directions for lighting technician Kyle Gavell to develop a performance for stage lights that would represent a day within each of the four seasons. Next, Shen transcribed in Mandarin what they saw in the recording of the lights on the stage. Skyi then translated that description into Tibetan, which served as the materials and learning tools for their conversations in Mandarin and Tibetan over twelve lessons. In addition to reading the Tibetan text together, Shen poses questions in response to their learning such as: “Why is the night motherly?” or “If finished actions contain a form of returning, is it a return to the soil?” The conversations were recorded, edited and compiled, and the audio was then translated into English and Tibetan. Shen’s father, Shen Daohong, made Chinese ink paintings of Tibetan and Indian figures throughout his life. Following his passing in 2018, they discovered that their father’s ancestral paths lead back to the people he painted, a connection that he did not know while living. This new information gave Shen a window to reflect on their judgment of his practice, space to imagine that he was subconsciously seeking a kinship which he could not articulate. This awakened a desire for Shen to connect with their father through studying the ecological culture of Tibetan language and further grounds their commitment to relate to places as land, though they might also be named as countries. The title encompasses a witnessing of time passing and what happens in that transformation, a marking of seasonal space. In Tibetan, when referring to the color of earth, the word for “green” is the same as the word for the color blue. Blue is partly composed of the word སྔོན་  meaning “before,” alluding to what came prior and what has been: the sky and the earth.

Translator: སྐྱིད་དར་འཛོམས། (Skyi Trazomsa)

Voices: སྐྱིད་དར་འཛོམས། (Skyi Trazomsa), Shen Xin

Writer, Director, Cinematographer, Editor: Shen Xin

Theatre Light Technician: Kyle Gavell

Colourist: Jason R. Moffat

Sound Mix: Jochen Jezussek

Support by Swiss Institute in New York, The Next Step Fund by the McKnight Foundation and The Sister Dennis Frandrup Artists in Residence Program in Minnesota, Times Museum in Guangdong, and MadeIn Gallery in Shanghai.